The war on Britain’s streets

Police in Birmingham have released this extraordinary footage of people firing shots at lines of police officers during the riots. As Iain Duncan Smith says
"http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7175138/web-exclusive-fulllength-interview-with-ids.thtml">in this week’s magazine, the riots were a wake-up call. This video shows what looks like
gangs, about three dozen of them in masks, not just trashing buildings but discharging firearms at unarmed police. The West Midlands chief constable, Chris Sims, released the footage this morning
and said he believes there is a "concerted and organised attempt" to kill or injure police.

This country has some severe problems but we are not at WAR. Its such lazy journalism.

Michael Patterson

McClane, I agree that you can’t identify individuals from this footage. However, the local gang of feral youths in the Newtown area glories in the name of the “Kill Dem Krew”. That should narrow down the suspect list by quite a bit, assuming that the Police actually act rather than appease.

Dennis Churchill

NicholasAugust 20th, 2011 3:30pmTo a hammer, it is said, all problems look like nails. To Blair’s lawyer heavy government there was no problem another law could not solve.Afterall if you make owning a handgun illegal no one will have a hand gun…

McClane

Nicholas is right.

After Dunblane we were told handguns were henceforth banned. Where are they coming from? If they’ve got one why haven’t I? I guarantee to use it only on my own property and not on the street or against the police.

The police issued the video to get the sympathy vote. You couldn’t identify anyone from it even if they were your husband, brother, son or, for all we know, daughter or wife.

The police acted too late to stop this. The government didn’t care. Just give me my gun.

Michael Patterson

No Frenchie, you mean the English not “the Brits”. I don’t “blame the Government” though it hasn’t escaped my notice as an Englishman that the English, alone in the UK, do not have a Government of their own.

This violence is the expression of the underclass: an unintended byproduct of a welfare state which makes dependency a more attractive economic option than independence and enterprise. Apparently we can’t afford the Police in sufficient numbers to “manage” the underclass now. Pity the powers that be over the past generation or two failed to grasp the foolishness of “investing” in welfare at the expense of individual enterprise. One consequence of this failure is the apparent need to cut Police numbers by 20%. You couldn’t make it up.

Frenchie

To Augustus: I like your comment.

Spectutor

For 10 years until 2000 we tried let the kids spell however they want. That resulted in a generation of illiterate people. Having learned nothing from that we are now trying let the kids do whatever they want with every penalty for parents and teachers who try to disciple them but no penalty for kids except the police whom they detest as a result. Sociology has spectacularly failed as a ‘science’. The more sociology we have the more anti-social people become.

J Wright

Is not Sims the Chief Constable who has made the news by asking for leniency for the rioters recently .Makes the case for Election of Chiefs, does it not Strapworld?

TomTom

I’ve just seen a map of a major British city showing all shootings and funnily enough you could overlay a postcode map of ethnicity on top and have a 100% correlation.

The streets are not safe for people carrying cash. Cash is the currency of drug-dealers. Drug-dealers carry guns to feel safe. Until the police make the streets safe for drug dealers carrying cash they will carry guns.

Augustus

For many years Britain’s parents have been told their children’s social, sexual, moral and cultural formation was better achieved by schools and social workers than mothers and fathers. Not only is the notion flawed philosophically, in practical terms it emasculates parents and enables children to act out every aggressive and narcissistic fantasy imaginable. In West Indian families, for example, there are numerous cases of poor but good and responsible parents who, in trying to discipline their children, are prosecuted by white, middle-class do-gooders for spanking a kid who goes on to join a gang and spend years in prison. Equally, parents are not informed by law if their underage daughters tell doctors or teachers they are sexually active, but they are left to face the consequences when teenage pregnancy occurs.And stop the war on religion. Whatever your view of faith and God, the massive decline of religious observance and community in Britain has removed one of the glues that held the country together. When churches disappear, the vacuum is filled by gangs or tribes. Beyond this is the disappearance of moral standards and ethical absolutes. Witness how in the black community it is the Christian evangelical youths who are least touched by the anarchy.

The privileged people who decide our immigration policy seldom live in those areas where the mass of newcomers settle. A nation is more than an assembly of financially viable shopping malls, and without some sort of national and emotional fraternity we see inevitable decay. And liberate the police from the whims of political correctness and government fashion. If London police had reacted swiftly and harshly to the rioting, there would not have been copy-cat incidents throughout Britain. Because of years of ‘racial sensitivity’ training they were held back in Tottenham, meaning — irony of ironies — law-abiding local people were attacked and robbed. The police are not guardians of the state but protectors of the people. Their job is not to arrest shopkeepers protecting their property, not to hand out traffic tickets, not to control controversial speech, not to be empathetic, but to stop crime and arrest criminals. Andlast, but not least, do not romanticize the worst of lower-class antics on TV and in cinema and music. Entertainment once presented a world worthy of aspiration, now it glorifies the mud and muck. It makes the rich richer, but keeps the poor poorer.

Frenchie

This video confirms how spoilt and lawless the Brits have become as a nation. Don’t blame the government, YOU voted them in. Austin Barry is right that gloves must come off. The “Beefsteaks” need a super-nanny state to tow the line.

Linuxonian

Well now there is no excuse at all for taking it gentle with these thugs pure and simple they are moronic drug infested no good low life thugs i say gloves of they want to play with fire ALL officers to be armed the Army to be deployed Silent defender to be brought across from the states along with the so called Puke batten they want to play by all means but they WILL end up DEAD .No more PC junk no more Mr Nice guy .

People will not stand for this crap any longer time is right to sort these idiots out and deport them .YMMV i dont budge a micron

Biggestaspidistra

that would be this Chris Sims then:

“we must not at this time abandon all compassion for some of our very damaged young people who have been caught up in these incidents.”

Nicholas

But I thought that thanks to Tony Blair and his New Labour gang all handguns had been made illegal in Britain and the public protected from their misuse?

Have I got that wrong then?

Austin Barry

Gloves off then.

Dennis Churchill

Politically correct sociobabble theories got us in this situation and the only solution proposed by our political class will be more of the same.

funkg

Brilliant comment by Augustus

Dennis Churchill

McClaneAugust 20th, 2011 4:39pmIf you can smuggle people in the backs of Lorries then guns are no problem.

Diane Choyce

Is this what the liberals are referring to when they tell us how multiculturalism enhances the quality and fabric of life in this country?

2trueblue

Augustus, very clearly put. We were ruled by a bunch of Scots who were determined to wipe out anything English, diluted our population, wrecked our education and NHS, whilst ensuring that the rest had a better deal. Child poverty grew under Bliar/Brown, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Those in the middle contributed more and got less. All in all Liebore did us no favours. Everything was dumbed down and it will be no easy task to raise the bar. Bliar coming into the spotlight now giving his opinion should be slapped down and told exactly how it is, his legacy. Bliars children, born, fed and educated in his time and fashion. His gift to the nation.The Conservatives are not putting the case. They need to articulate the facts now as Liebore and the media are changing history.

Derek

“…the riots were a wake-up call…”

For whom?

Some Truth

Actually it was the pathetic Major Conservative Government which to all intents and purposes banned pistols with the Firearms Amendment Act 1997 which banned all pistols/revolvers above .22 in calibre. All Blair did was to get rid of those as well, which frankly was an irrelevance by then.

The Police agitated strongly for this repressive legislation which targeted the law abiding and not the criminal, which was particularly invidious given as it was the Police’s failure to apply the law as it stood which was what allowed the mentally ill Hamilton to have a Firearms certificate in the first place.

So, if the police are looking for sympathy because of their long held failure to police the streets and thus allow criminals to be routinely armed and more recently while they abandoned tens of thousands of disarmed and helpless citizens to the mob then they can think again. Sorry.

Baron

Nicholas, sir, it took only seven years for the number of incidents involving guns to double after Blair and his cronies banned legally held handguns in 1997, if one were to call for the scrapping of the Act, the pseudo-liberal nutters would call for the re-introduction of capital punishment for the one. Go figure.

Baron

Augustus, spot on, sir, absolutely top class take on what the pseudo-liberal fruitcakes have done to the society.

Shall Baron tell you what’s going to happen next? We’ll get some more, much more of the same. Madness.

London Calling

What I learnt from the recent riots, as no doubt others did, was that the police were wholly unpreparedfor what their superiors described as unusual, unseen before events. I find this hard to accept considering the first line of defense in any society is to protect civilians with the preparation and response to social disorder as a consequence of mass civil unrest. I accept that thirty odd thousand police cannot control a population of six to eight million London Citizens, especially if we took a situation to the extreme i.e. food shortages due to unforeseen circumstances, pockets of vigilantism would arise, however the chaos that would ensue would make it difficult for the police and the publicto identify a thug from a hug and obviously this would be a job for the army to control, not the police.

The question is not how many guns are on the streets, its how many bullets accompany them. I don’t doubt there’s an arsenal of guns North and South. Therefore without startling the lambs, what I learnt from the recent riots cannot be mentioned here, however logically, people will be left to defend themselves if all else fails…as realistically our Armies are elsewhere making streets safer overseas…

Rosie

I can see why the police have issued this. The Fightback against the Fightback is getting out of hand. But they would help us all if they would close ranks with the government and stop undermining them. Trouble is, Blair and Brown created this class of political police, and now they can’t keep their mouths shut.

strapworld

J Wright. Yes it does. The present crowd are not policemen/women they are social workers masquerading as police